Vegetarian miso soup

There was one day, after work, that I felt an urge to just cook something tasty. It happened to be a cool evening, so it was just ideal for a hot soup.

There was some miso paste in the fridge, and at the supermarket, very nice specimens of fresh shimeji and shiitake mushrooms. I bought those mushrooms, some spring onions and silken tofu. And it took a matter of 20 minutes to slice and cube these ingredients and whip up a hot pot of miso soup.

As I was trying to find pictures of Shimeji mushrooms on the Internet, I came across a comical picture (below). The mushroom heads do resemble little figures, in a way.

I packed some for my colleagues, and I think they liked it. This was a completely vegetarian version; usually I would put in some bonito fish flakes, but that was not necessary, as the mushrooms imparted enough flavour to the already tasty miso soup.

All it needed was a sprinkling of spring onions to complete the soup. I left out the wakame seaweed, unfortunately.
(Artistic photo taken by Qiquan)

It's interesting to think that two key ingredients in the soup came from the soya bean plant. (Tofu and miso) Both the tofu and miso are derived from the soya bean, but how differently they taste! While one was subjected to fermentation, the other isn't.